Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism in the Era of COVID-19 by Pepe Escobar

Author:Pepe Escobar [Escobar , Pepe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nimble Books LLC
Published: 2021-02-09T20:00:00+00:00

Lost in a biopolitical quarantine

Byung-Chul Han, the South Korean philosopher who teaches in Berlin, has attempted to lay it all out.[104] The problem is he’s too much of a hostage of an idealized vision of Western liberalism.

Byung-Chul Han is correct when he notes that Asia fought COVID-19 with rigor and discipline inconceivable in the West—something that I have followed closely. But then he evokes the Chinese social credit system to mount an attack on China’s society of digital discipline. The system unquestionably allows for biopolitical surveillance. But it’s all about nuance.

The social credit system is like the formula “socialism with Chinese characteristics”; a hybrid that is effective only when responding to China’s complex specificities.

The maze of facial recognition surveillance cameras; the absence of restriction to data exchanged between internet providers and the central power; the QR code that tells whether you’re “red” or “green” in terms of infection; all these instruments were applied—successfully—in China to the benefit of public health.

Byung-Chul Han is forced to admit that does not take place only in China; South Korea—a Western-style democracy—is even considering that people in quarantine should wear a digital bracelet. If we talk about the different Asian models used to fight COVID-19, nuance is the norm.

The Asian-wide collectivist spirit and discipline—especially in Confucianist-influenced societies—works irrespective of the political system. At least Byung-Chul Han admits, “all these Asian particularities are systemic advantages to contain the epidemic.”

The point is not that Asian disciplinary society should be seen as a model for the West. We already live in a digital global Panopticon (where’s Foucault when we need him?) Social network vigilance—and censorship—deployed by the Silicon Valley behemoths has already been internalized. All our data as citizens is trafficked and instantly marketized for private profit. So yes; digital neo-feudalism was already in effect even before COVID-19.

Call it surveillance turbo-neoliberalism. Where there’s no inbuilt “freedom”, and it’s all accomplished by voluntary servitude.

Biopolitical surveillance is just a further layer, the last frontier, because now, as Foucault taught us, this paradigm controls our own bodies. “Liberalism” has been reduced to road kill a long time ago. The point is not that China may be the model for the West.

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